For natural pessimists, the inexorable destruction by climate change leads to thoughts that fall along the lines of this Jezebel headline, which asks: “ Why Would I Ever Want to Bring a Child Into This Fucked Up World?” Because really, why the hell would someone of procreating age today even consider having a baby? It feels like an utter tragedy to create new life, fall in love with it, and then watch it writhe in agony as the world singes to a crisp.

Then in the same article, contradicts himself:

My wife and I just had a baby, and it’s quickly becoming the best decision we ever made. Even though his future is uncertain, the knowledge that there’s still time left to turn things around has become a tremendously powerful motivating factor in our lives. Our baby has brought us back from the brink. It’s impossible to be hopeless with a newborn. Climate change has changed me. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

So, I’m sure this new plan will go over just as well, because surely, what we all need is some academic telling us how to live our lives.

Expert urges voluntary family planning to mitigate climate change

Professor calls for action to tackle the effect of a rapidly growing world population on greenhouse gas production

With climate change already close to an irreversible tipping point, urgent action is needed to reduce not only our mean (carbon) footprints but also the “number of feet” – that is, the growing population either already creating large footprints or aspiring to do so, argues a leading physician and environmentalist in The BMJ today.

Yet John Guillebaud, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at University College London, says most climate change discussions focus only on technology and consumption.

He points out that 45% of the world lives in areas where total fertility rates range from 2.1 to 5, and 9% where they exceed 5. In the 48 countries designated by the United Nations as least developed, population is projected to triple by 2100.

The UN’s latest median world population projection of 11.2 billion by 2100 is predicated on continuing reductions in fertility rate, he adds. Without them, the constant fertility variant projects to roughly 28 billion by 2100.

Studies invariably show that family planning is highly cost effective compared with other emission abatement strategies, he explains.

For instance, simply by having one less child, an American woman would reduce her “carbon legacy” (the summed emissions of herself and her descendants weighted by relatedness) by 9441 tonnes, he writes. This is around 20-fold (10-fold in the United Kingdom) more than would be saved by other eco-actions.

He calls on health professionals to “advocate for voluntary family planning” and says “action on population growth as well as technology and consumption is essential to ensure that climate mayhem is both minimised and mitigated.”

On Sunday, 5th June, Professor Guillebaud will be involved in celebrations for the ecotimecapsule project. Initiated in 1994 at botanic gardens in Kew and Ness, the Seychelles, New South Wales, Mexico and South Africa, it aims to make a decent, truly sustainable future a reality for our grandchildren – and for all the wild species in Nature that humankind so threatens. http://www.ecotimecapsule.com

###

Note to Editors

Analysis: Voluntary family planning to minimise and mitigate climate change

Bulls eye!
Employ the false flag strategy….
Make CO2 the bad guy; capable of dire consequences, while pushing a much more deadly and nefarious agenda: World population reduction, by any and all possible means.

You know, considering the notion that evolution is supposed to insure the survival of the species-meaning the toughest, smartest, healthiest humans should outnumber the weaker, stupid, pasty white hypochondriac types, I’m rather stunned that the man was capable of fathering a child in the first place. It’s rather anti-evolutionary to me that someone as fatalistic, pathetic, smelly (from his oath to not bathe often and waste precious resources) and obviously illogical as he is would be capable of attracting a mate, let alone one willing to inflict his particular genetic and intellectual drawbacks on her offspring. 🙂

Aphan
May 27, 2016 at 9:53 am
“You know, considering the notion that evolution is supposed to insure the survival of the species-meaning the toughest, smartest, healthiest …”
Nature doesn’t test for “toughest, smartest, healthiest.” She tests for success!

I’d like to turn the discussion around: if Eric Holthaus thinks he is enlightened (as he appears to think) then he should ask this question (with apologies to Kant’s Categorical Imperative): If all enlightened people have early vasectomies, who will be left to sire the next generation? Does that serve your higher purpose, Dr. Holthaus?

I logged in to literally make that exact same comment.
He’ll simply try and force it all on the rest of us. ‘You must live as I believe while I live as I damn-well please.’
And then, of course, he’ll pat himself on the back for what a great guy he is for imposing the Cause on everyone else.
No sacrifice is too great for someone else to make.
It also helps if you spit a lot of vitriol to cast your targets as degenerates who have it coming.

Aphan: That was the case until socialism became the norm. Now the lazy and indigent are being paid to make babies, while the workers of the world have to work harder in order to compensate for the ever higher tax burden.

Aphan:
Unfortunately, they’re also in charge of education. Out here in Oregon, the Portland school district has banned non-conformist material – at the behest of 350.org, no less – so the activists are, in fact, determining the curriculum.

Yes, they want Americans to reduce the number of offspring. And Canadians and Europeans, western capitalist nations. But those countries already have reproduction rates far below replacement, and if not for immigration, their populations would be plummeting. In fact, the people with the highest reproduction rate in those countries are the immigrants.

I know there’s a set of castrating clamps somewhere in my father’s old cattle infirmary, I’ll volunteer to take care of Eric’s promise, just get me his address and let me clear my calendar… can we say male soprano?

Well that’s mostly in Baroque Opera anyway, and the trouble with the baroque era, is they didn’t have enough castrati, so there was a continuous supply of too many nobody’s who wrote far too much trash elevator ‘music’, including idiot roles for the genderly disadvantaged.
it was trash when it was written, and it is still trash today. Unfortunately there are too many wannabe concert performing stars, so they keep dredging up all that old crap, to make records of.
It’s easy to recognize. 97% of it ends in a vowel.
G

I’m glad Eric had a kid and let the kid into his heart. A child is an amazing gift. Now, maybe that child will give Eric some perspective, something he desperately needs. Maybe Eric can learn from the process of fatherhood, that his own pathos and his own bad attitude toward his fellow men is what makes his world a living sh**hole in the first place. Maybe fatherhood will show him his world is much brighter just by not going that anymore. I sure hope he figures it out before he twists and bends the kid into a sad, resentful chip-off-the-old-block.
Eric, here’s a $200K future therapist bill avoidance tip for your kid, which you should try out as soon as you can. Tell him (or her) that MOST humans are good, kind, nice, and a few are bad. It’s NOT the other way around. Say that all people have intrinsic worth, and they all have opinions, just like you. No one has a right to deny the opinions of others, no one ought to dominate him, and visa-versa. The Golden Rule is time tested. Tell him if his happiness depends on others doing things the way he wants, he’s very likely to be unhappy. Tell him to make his own happiness, even when life is difficult. And tell him his mom and dad will be here for him even when he gets into his teenage years, and temporarily hates you.
Later on, when you realize the global warming isn’t the big deal you fear, apologize to the kid and let him know that you don’t begrudge him, or anyone, their carbon footprint. Teach him the Feynman version of science, and tell him that it’s okay if you can’t explain everything you might wish with science. If he happens to read your embarrassing history from the recent past, just explain that you were brainwashed to believe stuff by well-meaning people who didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Tell him not to be like you were, susceptible to that kind of propaganda and fallacious thinking, and help him not to fall victim to the insidious creep of group think and to cults.

I had a liberal relative whose child was a chip-off-the-old-block until the child became old enough to hold a job and observe the amount of money coming out of his paycheck for taxes. That same child is now quite vocal in his anti-liberal rhetoric.

There is no population bomb in western countries. Or China or Japan. There is one in some Islamic countries. So what conclusions to draw? We must fight the truth and talk about Western countries. Islandic people must diminish before they boil this planet!

Is ignorance genetic?
This poor soul has not been enlightened that a “population bomb” only exists as long as the third world is kept without affordable energy, education and private sector investment.
Affluence is the key to a controllable world population. Perhaps his progeny will understand that.

I just don’t get it – if one looks around the world today and compares to pre-fossil fuel days, things have never been better. Some people will never be happy. Anyway, according to demographic research isn’t the world population going to peak in a few years without extraneous castration?

Before world population changes much there will be serious issues within countries as aging and decline occur. There is a phrase, namely “demographics is destiny”, that applies because birth and death rates in developed countries change slowly. Migration is the unknown. Lots of reading on the web if you are interested.Incredible shrinking countries

I am all for Professor Guillebaud volunteering to climb into his ecotimecapsule and be a scold to future generations. “If you don’t mend your ways, in another five or six generations we could be burned to a crisp. No, really.”

With climate change already close to an irreversible tipping point, […]

Now there’s as fine a string of undefined terms and baseless claims as you’d ever want to see. It takes someone very ‘special’ to come up with that stuff.Here’s your sign, John Guillebaud, Emeritus Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at University College London.
Okay, all snark aside, he also said

Studies invariably show that family planning is highly cost effective compared with other emission abatement strategies, he explains.

MarkW got there first (just above) but it’s always the other people who need to cut,sacrifice, push up daisies, etc. so people who are really smart and really care about saving the planet can get on with their work of setting the planet aright.
I’m reminded of the chorus of that old parody song, Deterioratawhich would make an excellent serenade for the good professor.
(link to lyrics)http://www.lyricsfreak.com/n/national+lampoon/deteriorata_20966831.html

“Prosperity” results in a decreased birth rate, but it requires increased availability of energy, especially electricity, and transportation.
The prosperous people of the world are having far fewer children than their less-affluent neighbors.
The 15 nations with the highest birth rates in the world (>5.1 births per woman, 2014 data from the New World Bank) are ALL in Sub-Saharan Africa. 19 of the ‘top 21’ are African nations, and nearly all of these have a per capita GDP of less than US$1000.

“Voluntary”, huh? Any bets as to how long it takes for the call to change to mandatory? I have to wonder how many “irreversible tipping points” have already been passed. It seems like we should already be irreversibly doomed, so why not have a bazillion kids apiece? Just think, we could hit Armageddon that much sooner, and free Gaia from the tyranny of humanity! Or something.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), an organization promoting “the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity,” prepared a report for the UN’s 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that called for “reducing population in the interest of the environment.” At the conference itself, Zhao Baige, China’s vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission, pointed to China’s policy of forced abortion as a necessary means of controlling CO2 emissions. “”I’m not saying that what we have done is 100 percent right,” she said, “but I’m sure we are going in the right direction and now 1.3 billion people have benefited” (Xing, “Population control called key to deal“).

Voluntary family planning…for now…then Holdren’s forced abortion and sterilization under the aegis of an international enforcement institution something like a Police force for the UN. Don’t worry though; the victims/volunteers will be chosen “scientifically” so that only those likely to contribute to the new world order in a positive way will be allowed to procreate preferably in petri dishes and raised communally so that we are sure not to reenforce gender bias.

It was always about this, the UN want to make it mandatory, and force the remaining future reduced population into cities.
This kind of thing is to acclimatize people before the UN start trying to force everyone. Less resistance.
Expect much more of this to make its way into mainstream lefty thinking.
“planet singes”. Extreme environmentalists are mentally ill

I understand the UN predicts a lot of population growth in places like Africa. I wouldn’t oppose a family planning program to help them control that problem, this will allow them to live better as the world warms up and they continue to have war and famines.

There is a God and the earliest instructions he gave humanity was to multiply. So far any problems with the carrying capacity of the earth as far more to do with governments and pagan social structures preventing people from enjoying sufficient prosperity to afford the necessary food, clothing, shelter, energy and fresh water resources. There are large areas even of the US where almost nobody lives. There are plenty of resources to support even more humans.
I notice that such learned people who advocate we should limit populations seem to imply they are deathly ashamed of the prosperity we enjoy in western countries. Maybe they think they can make amends for their own prosperity be advocating that we all kill ourselves. Sick, sick and evil.

“For instance, simply by having one less child, an American woman would reduce her “carbon legacy” (the summed emissions of herself and her descendants weighted by relatedness) by 9441 tonnes, he writes. This is around 20-fold (10-fold in the United Kingdom) more than would be saved by other eco-actions.”
I cannot…..resist…..the urge….to….pull…..a “so obvious it’s stupid” here….just because it would be done if this man was a conservative, skeptic or anything else that is too sick to be taken seriously (snark):
RACIST!!! Since the African American population is currently growing faster than the American Caucasian population, this man is CLEARLY a racist who wants to limit the number of African American children!!! He’s basically pointing out that non-Caucasian American women are killing the planet at the rate of 9441 tonnes of carbon per “additional child”!!!!! Ethnic cleansing! How dare he????
(see what I did there? 🙂 )

Technically, preventing the births of an ethnic or racial group is one legal criteria for Genocide, how many births you prevent is irrelevant. Preventing births of any group because they are of that group is legally genocide

The thing I find interesting is that these same people are for unfettered immigration to first world countries, where the entire goal is to massively increase their standard of living which increases their “carbon footprint” by an order or magnitude or two, especially when you consider all the children and aunts and uncles and cousins ad infinitum. Which cities need more population and traffic? Which suburbs need to get sprawlier? Which dinky rural towns need to become big towns?

People get sterilized because they dont want kids, often being just too selfish. So they make up reasons like these for their selfishness.
I am very suspicious of Vice, it stinks of Soros Rockefeller, getting the latest generations and poisoning teir minds, it’s a mouthpiece for NATO propaganda, pretty much an establishment outlet posing as an alternative source for millennials
Half a billion just got dumped into it.

sometimes maybe its “selfish” though I see that as a bonus if they chose not to.
however many times its actually a decision based on sound reason..
like theyre unable to afford to raise a child properly, or have a partner whos unfit to BE around a child.
and then theres the (usually) men who get snipped so they can fool around and not cop paternity suits.
I was married to one.

Why do you think people who don’t want kids are ‘selfish’, MarkH. A rather irrational thought, imo. One could argue that a lot of people who HAVE kids are being selfish too. I don’t want children, but I don’t think I’m a selfish person. It’s just a choice I’ve made. And unlike our warmist friend, i won’t change my mind.

Reblogged this on Climatism and commented:
How on earth do climate-change-alarmists like Eric Holthaus sleep at night when they can’t even commit to a single solution that they assure us, by adhering to, will avoid “climate mayhem”?!
Astonishing hypocrisy. Though, in reality, just another day of plantery sanctimony in the life of climate.

“Why Would I Ever Want to Bring a Child Into This Fucked Up World?”
That sentiment in pop culture goes at least back to Meathead on ‘All in the Family’. Meathead did end up having kids and producing the documentary ‘This is Spinal Tap’ and probably some other stuff. I’m glad Carl (now 94) decided to have kids. He didn’t go up to 11 though, just 3.

It’s obvious we must decrease the population and cut back on our emissions immediately. To hell with any supposed holes in the ozone – now we’ve got a honking great hole in the sun — and you just know that it has to be our fault.

Fecundity has been in a dive in advanced countries for decades now and is going into a dive everywhere else. By 2025 the most impactful demographics will be below replacement and we’ll be globally below replacement no later than 2050. This is such a non issue.

@James at 48
May 27, 2016 at 11:33 am
“By 2025 the most impactful demographics will be below replacement and we’ll be globally below replacement no later than 2050. This is such a non issue.”
You assume we’ll make it to 2050. But even if we do, we still won’t be able to sustain this population in the face of several global threats that Ehrlich hadn’t even imagined.
Any event that disrupts global transport and communications for even a few months could be fatal for civilization. There’s no plan B for the globalized “just in time” economy. When it fails, the whole stack of cards collapses.
The thing the so-called intellectuals of our time can’t seem to grasp is that there’s no path back to the “horse and buggy days”. Without the entire gamut of high-tech infrastructure we currently rely on, the vast majority of people will quickly die of thirst, starvation, freezing and/or overheating.
The survivors will likely transition to scavenging and pillaging as a way of life that may degenerate to cannibalism, and will have to navigate an increasingly toxic environment they lack the means to monitor or avoid. Regional war lords may bring a measure of brutal order to areas in which sizeable military units managed to survive intact, but will likely fight each other over the spoils, further destroying what remains of technical expertise, equipment, and material essential to preserving health.
Nothing to worry about, eh?

The only people who do this (restricting children) are Europeans.
Africans? Muslims? Mexicans? Etc.?
HA
Of course the poor Chinese have the one-child policy.
They esp abort girls.
I say pay them to send the Chinese girls to America !

Isn’t this the position that president Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren has been advocating for some time. When will these clowns learn that greater prosperity will lead to lower birth rates, and greater poverty resulting from higher energy costs will lead to higher birth rates. PROSPERITY IS THE ANSWER.

I can’t recall where I read it now, maybe Phylis Schafly, where a tale was recounted of ‘events’ during The Gulf War.
The US miluitary obviously had hospitals set up for themselves and they (because they care of course) positively invited the locals to visit these clinics. So yes they did ‘care’ but it was also a golden mine of military intelligence gathering.
Anyway, legions of recently (and not so recent) married couples kept turning up, she being dragged to the doctor by her husband because she was, according to him, ‘infertile’
Tests showed nothing to be wrong with these people until the husband was finally persuaded to allowed a female nurse to interview the wife, without his presence.
Because boys and girls are kept separate in those societies, the female ‘works’ were a complete mystery to boys and in fact vaginas were considered the most unholy and dirty things on this planet. Nobody went there. So basically the boys were putting it in the wrong hole, they were doing s3x as they had learned it from older boys at school.
Henceforth, the error of their ways was gently pointed out and everyone lived happily.
But if someone points out that there are many more Iraqis running around than there were, Uncle Sam, you did it! Yes Mr and Mrs America, It All Your Fault. again.
Also here, we clever and educated Western types point out how our populations are steady or even declining and put it down to ourselves being so clever, educated and rich.
Sorry, I’m not having that. Its complete BS
Westerners are not having babies simply because they cannot afford them. (Certainly us) Europeans are being taxed into extinction.
Of a person’s gross salary, here in the UK:
11% goes as National Insurance
22% goes as Income Tax
6 or 7% goes into compulsory pension payments
6 or 7% goes as Council Tax
The compulsory ‘take’ is probably 50% with parking fees, commuter train tickets etc
Of whats left, 16% of everything we spend is so called Value Added Tax, so 66% of a UK person’s gross salary is tax. And thats before they buy stuff like insurance tax for cars and houses, (alcohol/tobacco) duty, motor vehicle ‘road’ tax, airline passenger duty and so on.
Tax paying people simply cannot afford to have babies anymore. Of course, the folks who can are the very folks who collect and adminster this huge revenue stream.
People like Eric Hothouse clown. They really will have to learn to keep quiet or, one of these days, they’ll go the way of Marie Antoinette
its that sort of stupity, so widespread and ever increasing and where the only solution to anything is a new tax, that is The Biggest Problem we have . Not climate change, or glaciers or meteors, sunspots (the lack of) or Carringtons. Peak Stupidity will be the killer

Dear sir or madam,
Please confirm whether this family size reduction should be applied to existing in addition to future offspring. I would appreciate an answer before June 8 when a tuition payment is due.
Kind regards,

“For instance, simply by having one less child, an American woman would reduce her “carbon legacy” (the summed emissions of herself and her descendants weighted by relatedness) by 9441 tonnes, he writes”.
The fertility rate in the US is 1.88 which is below the replacement level, “sub-replacement fertility”
The same is also true for most nations of Europe and for Canada, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Iran, Tunisia and China. There are many factors involved but the main one is probably education. Educated women have fewer children.
Any population growth in these countries is due to immigration. The developed world is soaking up a large part of the excess human production in the less developed countries.
The fertility rate in Uganda is around 5.6 and in Somalia around 6.6
One of the common features of low carbon footprint countries is the eagerness of their populations to leave them.
So if the good Professor Guillebaud believes what he advocates he should be off to Africa to carry out his proselytising there.

Another champion from Gang Green.
Right from the start most of these cult members sounded just like Eugenics retreads.
Naturally his wisdom does not apply to his most righteous and enlightened self.
These Eco-Nasties are beyond parody.

World fertility rate dropped by half from 5 children per woman in 1950 to 2.5 today. So world population should have decreased by half since 1950. Why did it increase by 192% from 2.5 billion to 7.3 billion? Because for the same period, child mortality rate declined from 15% to 8% and life expectancy increased from 48 years to 67 years. Therefore if we want to stop population growth, stop vaccination and health care so more children will die and people will die younger.

“Therefore if we want to stop population growth, stop vaccination”
What makes you believe that vaccination done today has a significant effect on death statistics?
Do you have any direct evidence? (no proxy, no analogies, no evidence relevant to vaccines not used anymore)
Or is that just another Big Science dogma?

“Diseases that used to be common in this country and around the world, including polio, measles, diphtheria, pertussis (whooping cough), rubella (German measles), mumps, tetanus, rotavirus and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) can now be prevented by vaccination. Thanks to a vaccine, one of the most terrible diseases in history – smallpox – no longer exists outside the laboratory. Over the years vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and saved millions of lives.”http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/howvpd.htm#why

Typical gibberish from a proud victim of Big Science and Big Medicine.
You can’t point to any evidence supporting “vaccines”. You probably don’t know anything about “vaccines” beside “vaccines = good”.

I have been saying for years that if people are really serious about lowering global population, all they have to do is outlaw health care. Yeah, it will stink for existing people, but think of the unborn children! (Ever notice how unborn children only matter when unpopular policies are suggested?)
So if the Gates are really worried about overpopulation, they ought to either disband their foundation or only offer vasectomies and tubal ligations.

After actually checking out what the ecotimecapsule project really is I’m compelled to comment. It’s really quite something having these vapid and faux mature adults satiate their inner feelings of sadomasochistic dread by duping 8, 9, 10 year old children into writing letters and poems of eco-doom, and then spreading the infection to future generations by burying this word smithery into time capsules.
Well, there’s only one way to get back at these joyless, life sapping adults while simultaneously inoculating future generations from their disease. And, that is by burying easily accessible time capsules near to their’s. Only these time capsules will carry large glossy photographs of a certain US Presidential candidate from the year 2016 sitting in his private jet and celebrating his 1,237 delegate threshold by drinking a diet coke and eating a McDonald’s burger. Attached to each photo will be a note that if future generations are around to have opened these capsules they can thank the American public for having had the good sense in November 2016 to have corrected the blitheringly stupid mistake they made in 2008. We will never surrender.

All 7,000,000,000 people on earth today could fit easily, if somewhat uncomfortably, within half of the Grand Canyon. That’s not “too” many people. The first step in any solution is correctly identifying the problem. Whatever the real problem is, it’s not the number 7E9.

If Alaska had the population density of New York City, you can fit all 7.3 billion people in it and there would still be vacant land larger than Texas. And the rest of the world would be uninhabited.
There are more cows than people by weight and they eat more food than us. Slaughter all the cows and we will double our grains supply and stop cow fart, which beat oil in global warming potential.

That wouldn’t be very good space management, would it, everyone crammed into one little corner and the rest of the planet empty? Unless of course, your idea is then for the human population to expand dramatically to fill the remaining space – 50 bilion? 75 billion? It might be a humanist dream, but one small problem is where is all the water going to come from to cater for all those people?

The people who think the world’s populations should be reduced do have a point. The earth’s resources are finite and we are consuming them at an ever increasing rate. The question is how to achieve that without draconian measures. The best way seems to enrich everybody as their life choices automatically lead to smaller families, see Japan and Europe for instance. CAGW is irrelevant in that context except that it impoverishes the third world and causes bigger families. Taxing CO2 is a distraction and an abomination.

I’d have to disagree on the basis that disposability and over-production (nearly two thirds of our produce goes to waste) should be our root concerns when it comes to the subject of resource management. Nearly a third of the worlds population lives off what most industrialized nations would consider dirt so population is, in my opinion, a non-issue.
You also have to consider that as the quality of life increases, birth rates decrease which we are witnessing nearly every single first world nation. But if you’re really set in your belief that population growth is an issue, then the only sound solution would be to globally increase our quality of life.

“The best way seems to enrich everybody as their life choices automatically lead to smaller families, see Japan and Europe for instance.”
If Japan does not increase its birth rate, in 500 years there will be only 15 Japanese left on earth. (Body Count, National Review, 1999) We use 31% of arable land for grains and crops. We can triple our food supply by using all the arable land. More if we use biotechnology. Our cities occupy only 3% of total land area. Animals occupy 56% of total land area. If the world emulates Japan, this world is going to the cows.

“He points out that 45% of the world lives in areas where total fertility rates range from 2.1 to 5, and 9% where they exceed 5. In the 48 countries designated by the United Nations as least developed, population is projected to triple by 2100.” – If this is majority Africa, it is only expected to double, not triple. Even that is a far cry from the usual projections; they’ve ticked them down over the years.
“The UN’s latest median world population projection of 11.2 billion by 2100 is predicated on continuing reductions in fertility rate, he adds. Without them, the constant fertility variant projects to roughly 28 billion by 2100.” – This does not make sense. How is a population rising when fertility rates are reduced? The medium variant suggests a higher-than-average fertility, the high being the highest, and the constant being that no drops are recorded. The low-variant is the most historically accurate as it includes things such as wars, famines, and disease.
So a dude that engages in double-speak doesn’t read the data? I’m not surprised in the slightest.

Three things drove modern humans to adopt smaller families:
1. The fossil fueled driven mechanization of farming. Before that kids were free farm labor not expensive mouths to feed.
2. Fossil fuel driven industries that used the surplus labor from farms. Creating jobs that you would not have your kids working beside you.
3. Electrical appliances that mechanized domestic chores. Making keeping a house in order with stoves, washing machines, and refrigerators required fewer hands.
So if he wants smaller families to save the planet, he should be encouraging cheap power that allows third world cultures with large families to adopt a modern lifestyle where kids are not currency or a labor pool.

“If a committed eco-activist can’t keep his promises, one wonders how this plan could ever work? “. This post’s illogical premise confirms my view that declining intellectual ability is the greatest threat to civilization’s survival.”
Having trouble grasping my point? Well, suppose Albert Einstein had been inspired to say, “I’ll stop smoking if nuclear energy can be harnessed”. Then presumably we would have neither nuclear weapons nor nuclear power plants today.
If all it takes to discredit any theory is an endorsement by a “committed” person who can’t keep his promises, then the test of falsifiability is superfluous, and all theories will be reduced to state-enforced dogma. Hello again, Inquisition.
The expression “non sequetur” , seems to have been discarded, together with the pillar of rigorous thought it represents,

The Left gave us the Ponzi scheme of entitlements. Now they literally want to eradicate the growing population base needed to support them, or ideally give us time to wean off of them. What do you call it when the stupid goes beyond burning? ‘Cuz that’s where we’re at.

Been hearing this crap since being in the Cub Scouts in the late 60’s. Still waiting for the population bomb and mass starvation. We cleaned up neighborhood areas (like that would help). Got my communist green,white,and yellow eco flag for my uniform and everything. Morons.

1. Is anyone keeping count of the ‘irreversible’ tipping points we keep passing? I’m sure we’d have to be in triple figures by now…
2. Surely we should be able to get a law passed that if you preach actions or ‘there will be dire consequences’ you have to actually take those actions yourself?
Then all the alarmists would have to get off the internet, stop using power of any kind (because oil) not have children, move out of homes (because oil and power) and live their lives out in the bush. (but not kill anything because biodiversity)

MarkMcD May 28, 2016 at 7:40 pm
1. Is anyone keeping count of the ‘irreversible’ tipping points we keep passing? I’m sure we’d have to be in triple figures by now…

😎
You’d think if they could actually prove we’ve passed any of the ‘irreversible’ tipping points they’d start preaching “Eat, Drink and be Merry for Tomorrow (or the next day, or the next year, or the next decade, or the next millennium, or the next….) We Die!”
According to them, it’s already too late to do anything. Rather than “doing stuff” to prevent the inevitable wouldn’t it be more prudent to prepare for it?
Or, maybe, all the “doing stuff” isn’t aimed at controlling “the climate” at all?
I think they’ve passed the “you can trust us” tipping along time ago.

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